Writing Efficient C++ Code
Archived — this story has rotated out of today’s deck. It is kept here in full.
The gist
Adam Sawicki published English translations of two Polish articles on Sep 25, 2026.
The pieces cover C++ efficiency and game timing for developers optimizing code.
Background
The two articles were originally published in Polish in the paper magazine "Programista" many years ago and were translated to English and published on 2026-09-25. One of them, "Writing Efficient C++ Code," was submitted to Hacker News by user ibobev. The topic also connects to other recent material on C++ performance, including a book by Fedor G. Pikus and a UC San Diego course.
How it unfolded
- Sep 21, 2026UC San Diego Division of Extended Studies lists course C/C++ Programming IV: Advanced Programming with Objects (CSE-X404.78), 3.00 units, $745.00, covering C++ style and efficiency.
- Sep 25, 2026Adam Sawicki publishes English translations of two articles originally published in Polish in paper magazine "Programista" many years ago: "Time Measurement in Game Programming" and "Writing Efficient C++ Code."
- Sep 25, 2026Amazon.in lists the eBook "The Art of Writing Efficient Programs: Master high-performance C++ and modern concurrency by understanding how code runs on real hardware" by Fedor G. Pikus.
- Sep 25, 2026Reddit r/cpp post "Why C++ is so hated!!!" appears.
- Sep 27, 2026Hacker News post "Writing Efficient C++ Code" (asawicki.info) submitted by user ibobev, 5 points, 2 hours old at capture.
Who’s saying what
- Author
- Adam Sawicki says some information in the translated articles may be outdated but may still be helpful, and points especially to the FPS chapter, stating FPS is cycles per second (1/s = Hz), a non-linear measure of frame processing/rendering time, so one shouldn't say "I improved my game performance by 5 FPS" without knowing the prior FPS.
- Author
- Fedor G. Pikus's book description states the "free lunch" of performance taking care of itself is over, CPU clock frequency has almost peaked, and writing efficient software now requires making good use of available computing resources.
- Public
- A Reddit r/cpp post states C++ code can actually be more efficient than C code because C++ is more expressive, but it's easy to casually do something that will make the code less efficient.
- Public
- A Facebook post advises following a consistent style, using meaningful variable names, optimizing for performance and, more importantly, keeping logic as simple as possible.
Still unverified
Adam Sawicki states some of the information in the translated articles may be outdated.